


Overclocked

by abundantlyqueer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:36:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abundantlyqueer/pseuds/abundantlyqueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's a doctor, Sherlock's a wreck, and the signal's getting lost in the noise.</p><p>A cyber-AU about love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: themes of captivity and compulsion, loss of identity and autonomy. Dub-con, medical fetish, what would be abuse of medical privilege in the real world. Depictions of drug abuse, catatonia, detailed physical and medical care-taking.
> 
> As always, I'm happy to field questions about the warnings, but also as always, I have only the very vaguest idea of where this story will ultimately go.

**111 0000**

_he comes to consciousness like a drowning man tearing himself from the water’s grasp to gorge himself on the air. he can’t see, but his mind is filled with flashing images – faces he doesn’t recognize, places he doesn’t remember being. an immense hum presses in on all sides, but his mind echoes with snatches of other sounds – voices speaking words he doesn’t understand, notes that don’t resolve into rhythm or melody in any way he comprehends._

_he tries to move, to struggle, but nothing of him responds. except for his mind, he is inert, numb,_ absent _. his panic flares blackly bright for a second, obliterating all other awareness, but then the hum pushes at him, and the images and sounds force themselves into focus again. he catches at them, clings, claws his way from one to another along tenuous, ineffable possibilities of connection._

_from this to this to this to make a line, a lifeline, a phone line, a phone number, a phone call, a call for help, for someone oh god someone help me i’m_

_the great hum attenuates abruptly. the images and sounds extinguish. for a split second, his mind spasms around its own emptiness, then falls back into the drowning nothing and is gone._

 

John limps along a busy nighttime street, past brightly lit shops and dimly inviting pubs and restaurants. He stops, bracing himself on his cane with one hand, and fishes his phone from his jacket pocket with the other. His pensive frown deepens when he looks at the number displayed, but he lifts the phone to his ear. 

“Hallo?” he says doubtfully.

“Doctor Watson, we have a processor in trouble,” a woman’s voice responds at once. “There’s a car on its way to you now.”

“I – there’s been some kind of mistake,” John grimaces, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m not – I don’t have a processor.”

“His regular doctor’s unreachable,” the woman says, “and the emergency locum’s already out on another call. The system supplied your name and number as an alternate – you are available, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes of course I’m available,” John says, his eyes fluttering open again. 

“The car will be with you in approximately one minute,” the woman says, and hangs up.

John lowers the phone from his ear, and stares at it for a moment before tucking it back into his pocket. He limps toward the edge of pavement, looking up and down the street.

A gleaming black car with darkened windows slips out of the traffic and pulls up in front of him. The nearside rear window slides down, so he takes an uneven step closer and stoops to peer in.

“We’d better hurry,” the young woman in the backseat says without lifting her gaze from the Blackberry she’s thumbing industriously. “He’s not doing terribly well.”

“I don’t have a kit,” John says.

“I have one here,” she says, tilting her fractionally to indicate the large metal box on the seat next to her.

“Oh. Right,” John says with an uncertain quirk of his mouth.

He straightens and limps round the back of the car. The driver gets out and opens the offside rear door; John nods his thanks as he gets in, drawing his recalcitrant right leg and then his cane in after him. The driver closes the door again and gets back into the car.

“So, what went wrong?” John asks as the vehicle moves off again. 

The young woman drags her gaze reluctantly up from her Blackberry screen and stares at him blankly.

“The processor,” John persists. “Do you know what went wrong?”

“Oh. He overheated or – overcooled or – something like that,” she says. 

“Okay,” John says, his eyebrows raised. “Is there anything else I should know about him?”

“No, definitely not,” she says brightly, and drops her gaze again.

John purses his lips and reins himself to impatient silence for the rest of the short journey. 

Fifteen minutes later, he lurches hurriedly up the steep narrow staircase, planting his cane on each step with one hand and palming the other along the opposite wall for balance. The driver follows, carrying the kit case. At the top of the stairs, John passes through the open doorway into the sitting room. 

The room is chaotic, with cardboard boxes and plastic crates stacked among the furniture, half-disgorging their contents onto every surface – books and magazines and loose papers, interspersed with scientific equipment and an eccentric array of other oddities. A young black woman is standing with her arms clasped across her chest, staring down at a young white man lying on the floor in the narrow space between the couch and the coffee table. She turns, looking at John with wide, stricken eyes.

“Who are you?” she demands. “Where’s Anderson?”

“He’s unreachable, apparently,” John says, crossing the room in a few uneven strides. “And the locum’s out on another call. They sent me – I’m John.”

“Sally Donovan,” Sally says.

John grasps one corner of the coffee table and yanks it aside, spilling some of the debris covering its surface – bits of foil and half-spent plastic lighters, charred teaspoons and used syringes. He drops his cane, grips one arm of the couch, and lowers himself gracelessly down onto his left knee. He gathers his right leg forwards with both hands, his first glance already encompassing the young man’s limp, narrow frame clothed in softly shapeless pajama pants and tee shirt, with a thin robe twisted around his torso and falling away from his shoulders. 

“What happened?” John asks, glancing his thanks as the driver places the kit case by him and withdraws. 

“I don’t know,” Sally says, her eyelids flickering. “He was fine and then – he wasn’t.”

“Heroin?” John says, tipping his head to indicate the syringes on the table even as he flicks the latch on the case and throws the lid back.

“Morphine,” Sally says.

John’s mouth tightens. He extracts a stethoscope from the case, tucks the earpieces into place, and slips the bell up under the rucked front of the young man’s tee shirt. 

“ _Shit_ ,” John says after a few intent seconds. 

He snatches a wrapped syringe and a glass vial from the case. He thumbs the seal off the vial with one hand, simultaneously stripping the wrapping from the syringe with his teeth. He draws the contents of the vial into the syringe, dropping the vial the second it’s empty, and unwinds the robe’s sleeve from around the young man’s left elbow. A galaxy of red-purple needle marks stretches along the inside of his arm from wrist to biceps.

“He’s going to come back with a jolt,” John says, plucking a small foil packet from his case and tearing it open with his teeth.

When Sally doesn’t respond, John looks up at her.

“He’s going to need you,” he says distinctly.

Sally takes a single step closer, her posture and expression taut with distaste. John frowns and looks down again. He takes an alcohol swab from the packet, swipes a patch of relatively unplundered skin near the base of the young man’s biceps, and slides the needle in. He pushes the plunger down, slips the needle free, and tosses the spent syringe onto the coffee table among the rest of the debris. He glances at the young man’s face, considering the lank hair falling over his forehead, the plum-dark shadows below his closed eyes, and the cracked skin of his curved lips. John presses the stethoscope bell to his patient’s chest again and listens intently.

“Come on,” he mutters, “come on - _fuck it_.”

He grabs for another vial and syringe.

“This isn’t the morphine,” he snaps as he fills the syringe and throws the empty vial aside. “This is overcooling – you gave him too much down-regulator.”

“I took him down just as far as I always do,” Sally protests. 

“Then you always take him down too far,” John says, leaning low as he slips the needle in close to his previous injection. “What’s his name?”

“What?” Sally says, pressing one clenched fist to her own chest.

“ _His name_ ,” John snarls, flinging the empty syringe aside and slipping one hand behind the young man’s nape to tilt his head back. “Before he was a processor he had a name – what is it?”

“Sherlock,” Sally says sharply, as if it’s pulled out of her without her consent. “He was called Sherlock.”

John yanks the earpieces of his stethoscope out of his ears and lets them fall around his neck as he pulls Sherlock’s chin down to open his mouth.

“Come on, Sherlock,” John murmurs, pinching Sherlock’s nostrils shut. “Come back to us.”

John bends, fits his open mouth to Sherlock’s, and huffs his breath out. He straightens again, lays his overlapped palms on Sherlock’s chest and jerks the weight of his upper body downwards.

“Come on, come on,” John says, the words jerked out by his quick, repeated exertion. 

He bends, expels another breath into Sherlock’s mouth, and then straightens again, resuming the hard, quick compressions on Sherlock’s chest.

“Come on, fuck it, Sherlock, _come on_ ,” John snaps. “I haven’t had so much as a sniff of a processor for fourteen weeks – _don’t die on me_.”

He swoops for another breath, and this time Sherlock’s chest expands with a shudder. John raises his head, his mouth curling into a crooked smile.

“Yes, come on,” he urges. “Come on, Sherlock, you can do it.”

Sherlock exhales shakily, then draws a long, deep breath in. John gathers the earpieces of his stethoscope back into his ears and returns the bell to Sherlock’s chest.

“Fantastic,” he grins breathlessly, after listening for a moment. “That’s - fantastic.”

Sally presses both hands over her nose and mouth for a moment, her shoulders softening slightly. John slips his stethoscope off and picks up a penlight from the case. He thumbs one of Sherlock’s eyelids up, revealing a dilated pupil bordered by a thin ring of pale leaf-green iris. John glances the penlight’s beam across Sherlock’s eye; his pupil constricts, his iris turning an even paler, grayer tint as it unfolds. Sherlock stirs a little and turns his head aside. John skims his fingertips down the inside of Sherlock’s forearm, sets them on Sherlock’s pulse, and laughs softly. Sherlock rolls his head back towards John and his eyes fall open.

“Hello, Sherlock,” John says. “I’m John.”

“He doesn’t remember his name,” Sally says. “And he’s really not going to remember yours.”

Sherlock’s unfocused gaze drifts away from John and comes to rest on an unexceptional spot of ceiling. John glances down at Sherlock’s bare feet; there are scattered needle marks near his ankles and crescents of grime between his long, thin toes. John picks up each hand in turn to examine the dry, cracked knuckles and dirt-rimmed nails. He runs his fingers up the narrow column of Sherlock left arm with its teeming constellations of needle pricks. Sherlock’s tee shirt is still gathered up on his chest; John draws the stained cotton down to cover him again before thumbing the heavy curve of Sherlock’s chapped lower lip away from his pale gums. 

“You said his usual doctor is Anderson?” John says.

“Yes,” Sally says.

“Well, Anderson’s not doing his job,” John says. “When a processor’s burning out there’re ways to - ”

“He’s not burning out,” Sally says. “He’s processing at ninety-six percent of his calculated.”

John’s eyelids flicker and his brows twitch together. He shakes his head.

“I don’t - if he’s not burning down,” he says, “why does he look like this?”

He glances up at Sally, who stares back with stony composure.

“He’s underweight, even for a processor,” John says, laying the words out precisely. “He’s malnourished. He’s _unwashed_.”

“You don’t understand,” Sally says, her face twisting softly as she glances down at Sherlock. “He’s - ”

“He’s a person,” John cuts in, “and he’s completely dependent on you. You’re supposed to care for him. You’re supposed to care _about_ him.”

“You have no idea what he’s like,” Sally says sharply. “He’s – a _freak_ \- he says these - ”

“Get out,” John says, his voice ice cold and hard edged.

“What?” Sally says.

“You heard me,” John says, bracing himself with one hand on the arm of the couch and the other on the corner of the coffee table. “He gave up whatever life he had left to become a processor, and he doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, so _get out_.”

“I’m his handler,” Sally protests.

“Not anymore,” John grimaces, forcing himself up onto his feet to stand unsteadily over Sherlock. “A processor’s doctor can prescribe a change of handler, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re not his doctor,” Sally says.

“Yes, I bloody am - I just stopped him from dying,” John says, “and I’m not leaving him until someone I can _trust_ comes in to take over from me.”

“Okay, you know what?” Sally says through gritted teeth. “You can have him. I thought getting a processor who runs at ninety-six percent was some kind of gift, but he’s - he is _insane_. There is something _wrong_ inside him - ”

“Out,” John shouts. “ _Get out_ , or so help me - ”

Sally whirls round and lunges through the open doorway. Her feet thud on the stairs, then the door at the bottom is wrenched open and then slammed shut. 

John unfurls his clenched fists and flexes his fingers deliberately. 

“Yeah,” he says, looking down at Sherlock, “don’t think you’ll be missing her much.”


	2. Chapter 2

**110 1100**

_this time, he floats slowly up out of the nothing. his consciousness washes gently in and out of existence, the darkness and the great hum surrounding and suffusing him. the images and sounds in his mind form and fade, re-form and re-fade, but they’re blurred and muffled and less than meaningless to him. he drifts among them, his mind insubstantial enough to be carried on even the faintest currents of connection._

_something minute – a scarlet wisp of memory or intention – unwinds somewhere in the vast black. his mind fumbles for it momentarily but then, forgetting, falls into the pale glow of another image, and the muted thrum of another sound. distantly, as if the thought is forming in someone else’s mind, he realizes he’s not being granted enough awareness for him to feel fear._

_he strains; the images and sounds sharpen and flicker like candle flames caught in a draft. tiny lights spark along the margins of the darkness, glow dimly and wink out._

_the great hum narrows and fades. the images and sounds go out. his mind begins to drop apart at its edges, disintegrating back into the nothing. the nothing washes through him. he dissolves into it and is gone._

 

John puts one hand to the arm of the couch and leans precariously down to pick up his cane. He limps into the kitchen where more cardboard boxes and plastic crates clutter the corners. There’s less paper in evidence here, especially if one discounts the dozens of dog-edged and damp-blotted copy books piled alongside the scientific equipment that covers every surface including the hob of the stove. John exhales a sound of amusement as he surveys the small jars of chemicals arrayed on the spice rack, and the larger plastic tubs jostling for space on the countertop next to the tea caddy and kettle.

He leans his cane against the edge of table, shrugs his jacket off, and drapes it on the back of a chair. He shuffles caneless across the kitchen, steadying himself with a hand on the table’s edge, then the countertop, and then the refrigerator door handle. He pulls the refrigerator open; the neat rows of fluid packs and nutrient bars on the top shelf are a stark contrast to the jumble of empty glass jars and petri dishes on the other two shelves. Each container bears a label specifying the item it once held: John smirks in surprise as he reads, _small mammalian brain (Rattus norvegius?) imperfectly preserved in sparkling wine (Dibon Cava?)_ , _partially disintegrated filamentous material (human hair?) in corrosive fluid (drain cleaner?)_ , and _Rhizopus stolonifer variant lyococcos (culture?) on Scotch egg (substrate?)_.

“You must have been a pretty interesting bloke, Sherlock,” John says aloud as he takes a fluid pouch and a nutrient bar from the top shelf and closes the refrigerator again.

He shuffles to the table, takes his cane up, and makes his way back to the couch. He lowers himself laboriously down to the floor again. Sherlock is still stretched out on his back, his head turned slightly to one side, his gaze drifting very slowly from one side of the floor to the other.

“I’m afraid my days of carrying a processor – even one as skinny as you – are over,” John says, taking another vial and syringe from the kit case. “So you’re going to have to warm up a bit more and help me here.”

He fills the syringe and unwraps another alcohol swab. He glances along the lengths of Sherlock’s arms, purses his lips, and then shifts aside to lean over Sherlock’s bare feet. He swabs the skin of Sherlock’s left instep, inserts the needle, and delivers the injection.

“When I get you cleaned up I’ll put a peripheral line in,” he murmurs, discarding the used swab and empty syringe on the coffee table. “There isn’t enough skin on you for both of us to stick needles into.”

Sherlock’s breathing deepens, his chest rising and falling more emphatically.

“Come on,” John says. “Let’s see if you can sit up.”

He slips his right hand and forearm under Sherlock’s neck and shoulders, and scoops his torso up from the floor. Sherlock slumps forwards into a sit. John turns him so that he’s slouched with his back resting against the front of the couch. He cups a hand under Sherlock’s chin and tips his head upright. Sherlock’s gaze slides dully across John’s face to the wall behind him. John snaps the tab off the fluid pouch and brings the opening to Sherlock’s mouth.

“Here we go,” John murmurs. “Take your time.”

He presses the pouch slightly, and the clear fluid wells against Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock opens his mouth slightly; John presses a little more, and Sherlock’s throat flexes as he swallows reflexively. John keeps his eyes fixed on Sherlock’s mouth, watching for the little swell of wetness that means he’s pressing the pouch too tightly. After a minute or two, he’s confident enough of Sherlock’s cooperation to drop his gaze briefly to the steady lift and fall of his larynx. Sherlock drinks until John squeezes the last of the fluid out. He crumples the empty pouch and tosses it onto the coffee table.

“Okay, if you make it onto the couch, you can have a nutrient bar,” he says brightly.

He twists and pulls himself up onto the couch seat, then plants his left foot solidly, hooks both forearms under Sherlock’s armpits, and hauls him upwards. He deposits Sherlock next to him, slumped with his long arms and legs trailing. John tears open the foil wrapper of the nutrient bar, breaks off a section of the pale paste, and places it to Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock opens his mouth just enough to accept the offering, and starts to chew slowly.

“Christ, they’ve pretty much emptied you out, haven’t they?” John says softly.

Sherlock swallows, and then sits motionless except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.

“I’m sorry,” John says, looking down as he breaks another piece off the nutrient bar, and back up as he places it between Sherlock’s lips. “I’m sorry about – whatever it is that qualified you for the program in the first place, and I’m sorry someone didn’t take better care of you after you joined.”

Sherlock chews and swallows.

“Donovan was right about one thing, though,” John scowls. “I’m not your doctor - I’m not anyone’s doctor anymore. So, the bad news is, I don’t actually have the authority to get rid of her. The good news is that I can be pretty persuasive when I have to, and I’m not leaving you until they agree to give you a new doctor and a new handler – I promise.”

Sherlock’s eyelids droop slightly, his soft-edged gaze drifting to a stop on the far corner of the room.

“You need a wash,” John says, after Sherlock’s eaten the entire nutrient pack one slowly chewed section at a time. “The orderly could do it in the morning but – it’s not like either of us has anything else to do, right?”

He stands up, and leans down to take hold of Sherlock’s upper arms.

“Come on, up,” he says firmly.

He pulls on Sherlock’s arms. Sherlock, blank-faced, draws his bare feet under himself, leans forwards, and unfolds up onto his feet.

“All right,” John says, grasping his cane in his right hand and wrapping his left arm around the narrow span of Sherlock’s waist, “let’s see what scientific projects you had on the go in your bathroom.”

He draws Sherlock forwards; Sherlock hesitates - clearly inertia, not resistance - and then yields. They make their way slowly, Sherlock shuffling and John limping, down the hallway and into the bathroom.

“Oh, look at that,” John says with a slight laugh. “That’s not what I expected at all.”

The bathroom is modest in size, but quite luxurious and perfectly organized. Numerous toiletries in severely elegant glass and steel packaging are neatly grouped next to the washbasin and on the shelved alcove, together with stacks of precisely folded white towels. John steers Sherlock to the closed toilet and sits him down, then leans his cane in the corner next to him. The room is small enough that John can reach from one point of support to another as he moves to the glass shower enclosure, turns the water on, and then makes his way back to Sherlock.

“I hope you weren’t too fond of these clothes,” he says, “because I think they’re done.”

He pushes Sherlock’s robe back from the sharp points of his shoulders. The slippery fabric spills downwards and pools onto the floor. John takes hold of the hem of Sherlock’s tee shirt and draws it upwards.

“Arms up,” he says encouragingly.

Sherlock lifts his arms vaguely, or least doesn’t resist the upwards impetus of John stripping the tee shirt off over his head. Once the garment is off, Sherlock lets his arms unravel down against his sides again. His skin is paper-white and stretched silk-fine over the painfully sharp prominences of collarbones and breastbone and ribcage.

“Christ,” John whispers, and then more clearly as he takes Sherlock by the arms, “stand up for me, come on.”

Sherlock rises obediently under the gentle but implacable pull of John’s hands, to stand swaying slightly and staring blankly over the top of John’s head. Sherlock’s belly caves away below his ribs, his white skin smudged with a little dark hair beneath the taut oval of his navel. The elasticated waist of his pajama pants hangs precariously on the jutting crests of his hipbones. John tugs them downwards, his gaze jumping from Sherlock’s belly to the ragged cords of muscle under the pale skin of his thighs. The soft, loose pants fall down Sherlock’s legs to fold around his feet. Sherlock is naked underneath. John braces himself with a hand on the washbasin, goes laboriously down onto his left knee, and then sits down on his heel with his right leg folded awkwardly in front of him.

“Step out,” he says, grasping Sherlock’s right ankle and applying some lift.

Sherlock drops a hand to John’s shoulder and lifts his foot from among the folds of cloth. John’s gaze jerks upwards and then down again instantly. He pushes the pajama pants out of the way and sets Sherlock’s foot down, then guides him to lift the other one and sweeps the pants aside entirely.

He takes hold of the washbasin again, hauls himself back onto his feet, and passes hand to hand from there to the towel rail to the door of the shower enclosure. He spreads one hand under the spray of water and gives a slight nod of approval. He looks at Sherlock, who’s still standing with his hands hanging at his sides.

“Sherlock, come here, please,” John says, his tone firm but warmly encouraging.

Sherlock doesn’t respond; John’s mouth twists unhappily. He makes his way back to Sherlock, slips an arm around him, and guides him the couple of steps to the shower.

“There’s only one way we’re going to be able to make this work, isn’t there?” John says ruefully.

He steps aside, sits down on the closed toilet, heels his right shoe off, and then pulls his left off with his hands. He takes his socks off, bending to tuck them into his shoes and then straightening to undo his belt and fly. He pulls himself onto his feet and pushes his pants down, steadying himself with a hand on the washbasin as he steps out of them. He undoes his shirt buttons with quick, determined flicks of his fingers, and shoulders his shirt off to reveal a white tee shirt and underpants. He plucks at the hem of his tee shirt, and then the top edge of his underpants, and glances at the long, lax line of Sherlock’s bare back.

John ducks his head and bundles his tee shirt off. His skin is deep gold to his biceps and the base of his neck; elsewhere it’s paler gold, with a fuzz of fair brown hair around each nipple and down his breastbone, turning smoother and darker down the line of his belly and below his navel. On the front of his left shoulder, a sprawling tangle of dark red scar-tissue is interrupted by patches of tight, abruptly pink skin.

He drops his tee shirt on top of his already discarded shirt, skins his underpants down his legs, and steadies himself with a hand on the washbasin as he steps out of them. He moves back to Sherlock’s side, puts his arm around Sherlock’s waist, his hip against the pared curve of Sherlock’s outer thigh, and draws Sherlock’s arm across his back. Sherlock’s hand hangs loosely against the curve of John’s biceps.

“Here we go,” John murmurs, drawing Sherlock with him as he steps into the shower enclosure.

The spray of water shatters against Sherlock’s skin. His eyebrows twitch together fractionally, then his expression smooths again into blank indifference. John takes a thick, soft washcloth and a heavy oval of soap from the shelf in the shower. He soaks the cloth and rubs the soap into it until it’s thick with lather.

“Get comfortable,” he murmurs as he moves behind Sherlock, “because this is going to take a while.”

He starts at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, rubbing the washcloth patiently back and forth over the sharp-edges of vertebrae and shoulder blades, until the skin beneath the ribbons of grayish lather turns fresh and flushed. While he works, he talks quietly – just a stream of trivial stuff about how nice Sherlock’s flat is, and all the interesting looking stuff he has, and how much more comfortable he’s going to be when he’s cleaned up and has a peripheral line in so John won’t have to stick him with a needle again. Sherlock sways, yielding pliantly under the rhythmic press of John’s hand on the washcloth.

John washes from the boney points of Sherlock’s narrow shoulders down the ropey lengths of his arms. He soaps the bristles of the nailbrush and scrubs the tips of Sherlock’s fingers. He lifts each arm in turn, washing from the armpits down the long slants of Sherlock’s ribs to the curved blades of his hipbones. He braces himself with a hand on the shelf and bends to wash the hollowed curves of Sherlock’s flanks, his outer thighs, his calves. He moves in front of Sherlock, and washes from the notch at the base of his throat down his chest to his belly.

“Sorry,” John murmurs, when he’s re-soaped the washcloth and begins to wash the insides of Sherlock’s thighs.

He washes the creases of Sherlock’s groin and the underside of his balls, and then reaches back to clean the cleft of his behind. Sherlock blinks heavily against the drops of water beading on his eyelashes. John murmurs another sound of apology as he closes his hand, the washcloth spread across his palm, around Sherlock’s cock and works the cloth gently against skin.

He glances up at Sherlock, who’s still slack-faced and dull-eyed. John looks down again. He pushes Sherlock’s foreskin back gently, exposing the crinkled red skin of his glans. John cleans him carefully and then shifts aside to let the streaming water rinse him.

“Kneel down,” John says softly.

The words are pointless; it’s John’s hands – one on Sherlock’s hip and the other behind the crook of his knee – that shape the motion and bring Sherlock gently down onto the tiled floor at John’s feet.

“Two kinds of shampoo,” John says wryly. “Did you use one, and then the other? Or were they for different days?”

He takes the bottle that’s closest to him, drizzles some of the transparent fluid into his hand, and works it into the tangle of Sherlock’s hair. He switches the flow of water to the hand spray and rinses, then re-washes and re-rinses again.

“Three kinds of conditioner,” he smirks. “I just want to you know, Sherlock, if I didn’t have a sister I’d have thought you used this stuff on leather shoes.”

He picks a bottle at random, applies a gob of it to Sherlock’s hair, and starts combing the knots out. When he’s done, the rippling strands of Sherlock’s hair taper down to the nape of his neck. John rinses him down one more time and turns the water off. He towels Sherlock’s hair and wipes his face, before bringing him to his feet and drying the rest of him. Only then does John towel himself off and pull on his underpants, tee shirt, and pants again. He guides Sherlock from the bathroom to the adjoining bedroom. 

The bedroom is of a piece with the bathroom rather than the sitting room: quite luxuriously decorated, but almost intimidating in its simplicity and neatness. The open closet door reveals an obsessively complete dissection of black and gray and dark jewel tones into exquisitely tailored jackets and pants and shirts, punctuated by several pairs of dark denim jeans hanging at the end of the row. The double bed is neatly made, the white top sheet folded down over the gray blanket. The two white-slipped pillows are piled one on the other on a single side of the mattress.

“For a man with that many hair products, you don’t seem to have expected a lot of company,” John says, shaking his head. “Maybe you always went to hers … I suppose she didn’t appreciate the experiments, eh?”

He limps to the dresser, opens and closes drawers until he finds a pile of perfectly folded pajama pants next to a row of folded and rolled tee shirts. He takes a garment from each side of the drawer and brings them to Sherlock. John clothes him, guiding each limb with light touches and gentle commands that Sherlock doesn’t seem to hear. John throws the bedcovers back, and guides Sherlock to sit and then lie down on the bed. John draws the bedcovers up over Sherlock’s legs, and then fingers the damp curlicues of hair back from Sherlock’s forehead and touches the pad of his thumb lightly to the tip of Sherlock’s chin.

“You must have been something to see,” he murmurs. “You must have been amazing.”

He smooths the covers over Sherlock’s hip, twitches the sleeve of Sherlock’s tee shirt down a bit, and turns away.


	3. Chapter 3

**110 0101**

John is fully dressed again – shoes and socks on, shoelaces double-knotted, shirt buttons fastened to just below the collar, and shirttails tucked smoothly into the waist of his jeans. He sets the kit case down on Sherlock’s bedside table, leans his cane against the curved wooden footboard of the bed, and sits down on the edge of the mattress.

Sherlock is lying almost exactly as John left him, stretched out on his back with one hand resting on his stomach and the other curled palm up at his side. His eyelids are half-lowered, his eyes gleaming palely under his eyelashes. 

John flips the lid of the kit case back and shuffles through the contents of the upper tray. He extracts a roll of tape, tears several short lengths off, and tacks them on the edge of the open case before tossing the roll back in. He takes out a couple of sealed packets, unwraps a coil of tubing from one and a needle from the other, fits them together, and sets them down in a nest of their opened packets on the blanket next to him. He takes out a rubber strap and, holding it looped in his fingers, he draws the pad of his thumb speculatively down the inside of Sherlock’s right forearm. He presses gently, his gaze intently following the shadowy snake and knot of Sherlock’s veins beneath his skin.

“Let’s try up here,” John murmurs, having drawn his thumb from elbow to wrist and back. 

He slips the strap around Sherlock’s biceps, tugs it tight enough to pinch a crease in the pale, thin skin, and tucks the end under to hold it in place. The vein in the crook of Sherlock’s elbow distends and darkens. John murmurs approvingly, leaning in to stroke his right thumb down Sherlock’s forearm, drawing the skin taut. He picks the coil of tubing up by its attached needle, presses the beveled point along the thickening cord of Sherlock’s vein, and slides it through the skin. The bore of the tubing flushes abruptly bright red, and John’s mouth quirks in a crooked smile. He pins the curl of tubing in place with his thumb, plucks a piece of tape from the edge of the kit case, and smooths it into place on Sherlock’s arm. Two more pieces of tape, and then John gathers up the empty packages from the bedside table and screws them into a tight ball. 

“Hallo,” a woman’s voice calls out from the sitting room. “Anybody home?”

“We’re in here,” John says loudly, glancing intently at Sherlock before pushing unsteadily to his feet.

“Hello. I’m Sarah Sawyer,” Sarah says as she crosses the threshold of the bedroom. “I’m the locum.”

“John Watson,” John says, his mouth curved warmly but his eyes bright and intent. “They pulled me in to cover while you were … ”

“ … it’s been insane,” Sarah says, sweeping a falling strand of hair back from her face as she sets her kit case down on the floor. “An overheat, an overcool, and a wire blowout all on the same night.”

John huffs a sound that might pass for sympathetic laughter, but there’s something jagged in his eyes. 

“Well, thanks for – I hope you haven’t been – oh God you’ve been here for ages,” Sarah says, glancing at the small face of her wristwatch. “I’m so sorry – what a way to spend your Friday night.”

“It’s – no, it’s fine,” John says with a slow blink. “I’m happy to help.”

“So, what happened?” Sarah asks, still looking at John. 

“Overcooling crisis,” John says, turning half aside to look down at Sherlock. 

Sarah’s expression sharpens to a frown. 

“How’s he doing?” she asks, moving closer to the bed.

“He came back pretty strong,” John says, watching intently as she sits down next to Sherlock, “but – honestly? I think he’s been chronically overcooled for a while now. He’s too thin and - ”

“Oh, his poor _arms_ ,” Sarah says, her fingers gliding through the air above Sherlock’s skin. 

John presses his lips together.

“He’s burning out, then?” Sarah says, looking up at John.

“His handler said no,” he frowns. “She said he was running at ninety-six per cent.”

“Ninety-six – is that even possible?” she asks. “I mean, with his body like this? The highest I’ve ever seen is eighty-two - ”

“My guy Blackwood ran at eighty-six,” John says, “and he looked like he could break me in half.”

Sarah looks doubtfully at Sherlock.

“I realize it’s your call,” John says, as Sarah picks Sherlock’s hand up to examine his fingernails and knuckles, “but I’d want to see him at least ten pounds heavier and - ”

“If you’re asking me whether I consider this an adequate standard of care, the answer is obviously _no_ ,” Sarah says, setting Sherlock’s hand down again. “His handler and his doctor need to be more invested than this – I’m going to request reassignments for him.”

“Thank you,” John says, his shoulders rounding and his stance softening.

“For what? Doing my job?” Sarah says, but her eyes flicker through confusion to dawning curiosity, before she looks at Sherlock again. “What’s his qualification?”

“I – I don’t know,” John says.

“You didn’t check?” Sarah asks. 

“I – the thing is, I was sent here by mistake,” John says, squaring his shoulders even as his gaze softens and falls away from hers. “I’m out - my data access has been terminated and - ”

Sarah’s gaze goes to John’s cane at the foot of the bed.

“I caught a stray Taliban bullet in Afghanistan,” John says. 

“You were in the army?” Sarah says in sudden comprehension. “You worked with _military_ processors?”

John nods, the soft twist of his mouth at odds with the firm lift of his chin. 

“Goodness,” Sarah says, her eyebrows rising. “Well – let’s take a look at his record, shall we?”

Her eyes are serious and somehow uncertain as she stands up and moves past John. John takes his cane up, glances at Sherlock, and follows her down the hallway to the sitting room. Sarah crosses to the table between the windows and sits down, opening the laptop that’s lying on the table. She powers it up and taps keys, while John waits discreetly at the other side of the table. 

“So who’s _supposed_ to be treating him – oh,” Sarah says, her frown melting abruptly into a smile of surprise. 

“What is it?” John asks.

“You said you were here by mistake,” Sarah says. “You’re not – he’s just been reassigned to _you_.”

John shakes his head even as he limps a step closer to peer at the laptop screen.

“I’ll log out, you can log in,” Sarah says. 

She stands up and steps aside to let John lean down to the keyboard.

“My access code’s not going to work,” he says, as he pokes keys with both index fingers. “My clearance is – oh.”

“ – higher than mine,” Sarah smiles, as Sherlock’s record opens on the screen. 

“This can’t be right,” John mutters.

“I know it’s always a wrench,” Sarah says, “but – every processor burns out, and every doctor or handler gets reassigned.”

“You don’t understand,” John says, “my processors didn’t burn out, I’m not _between assignments_ \- I’m unfit for duty.”

“I – John, I can understand that they wouldn’t send you into a war now,” Sarah says, “but - ”

“Suppose Sherlock was hurt, or uncooperative,” John cuts in, “what would I do? I’m not able to -

“You’d do what any of us would do,” Sarah says firmly. “You’d call for an orderly to help you.”

John’s scowl unravels into something more like confusion. 

“There’s no compulsion in the program,” Sarah says more lightly. “If you don’t _want_ him - ”

“Of course I want him,” John says sharply.

“Well, then,” Sarah says, looking pointedly at the chair she’s vacated.

John lowers himself dubiously into it and sets his cane against the side of the table. 

“So, what is his qualification?” Sarah asks gently. 

John clicks through several tabs, his frown deepening. 

“It’s not in his record,” he says, shaking his head.

“Not something that has to be managed, then,” Sarah says. “What about his ar-exes? Is he being medicated for anything?”

John clicks another tab and scrolls down a spreadsheet.

“No, nothing,” he says, “he’s got a hell of a drug habit – intravenous cocaine, mostly, some morphine … otherwise it’s just the up-regulators and down-regulators for his processing sessions.”

“John,” Sarah says, “there’s almost exactly two years’ worth of data here.”

John’s finger jerks back from the touchpad.

“He can’t have long left,” Sarah says. 

“He’s not burning out,” John says firmly. “He’s at ninety-six per cent – the first sign of burn out is a steady drop in per cent processing.”

“And twenty-seven months is the longest any processor’s ever lasted,” Sarah says. 

“So he’s going to set a new record,” John says, with a sudden, sharp-edged smile. 

Sarah looks back at the screen. 

“He has two wire numbers,” she says in surprise. “Is that – does he have two _wires_?”

“Yeah – you’ve never seen a double before?” John asks.

Sarah shakes her head.

“Um, I guess they are pretty rare,” John says.

“What’s it for?” Sarah asks.

“One’s connecting him to the data stream, same as every processor,” John says quickly. “The other’s collecting data _about_ him – how he moves in the data stream, the pieces of data he’s connecting to each other – then they can have an inexperienced processor trace the same path, hopefully learn to make the same kinds of connections. It’s how they teach processors.”

“Teach them?” Sarah says. “I thought – you couldn’t teach processing – that someone just has the right kind of brain or they don’t.”

“The right kind of brain to accept a wire,” John corrects. “That just gets them access to the data stream – they still have to be taught how to swim in it.”

Sarah stares at him, her eyes moving intently over his face, as if he’s something quite novel. 

“What?” John prompts. “What’s the look for?”

“You sounded like a handler, not a doctor,” Sarah says.

“Army training,” John smiles. “In combat everything’s a crisis and you don’t always have the luxury of waiting for an expert. You learn to improvise – I can fix engines, too.”

“Well,” Sarah grins. “I’ll certainly keep that in mind.”

The connection between their eyes stagnates, each of them clearly expecting the other to look away. The seconds spin out, their smiles stuttering and then strengthening again. 

“I’d better go,” Sarah says, pushing distractedly at the side of her hair. “Grab a bite while things are quiet.”

“Yes, before the next disaster strikes,” John says, getting to his feet a little awkwardly. 

“It was nice to meet you,” Sarah says.

“And you,” John says, his smile suppressed at the corners of his mouth but shining playfully in his eyes.

“And – congratulations on your reassignment,” Sarah says. “I hope it goes – I could drop in, if you like – to see how you’re getting along.”

“That would be – um, yes,” John says, his smile blossoming irrepressibly. “I’d like that very much.”

“I could stop by after my shift,” Sarah says.

“Anytime,” John beams. “You know where to find us.”

Sarah hums agreement. She flutters a little, picking her jacket up from where she dropped it on her way in, and collecting her kit case from the bedroom, before going back out through the sitting room and down the stairs. To John’s surprise, he hears her murmur a brief greeting to someone in the lower hallway, and another women’s voice responds in kind. John walks out onto the upper landing and looks down the stairs to see the young woman who rode with him in the car standing at the bottom step. 

“Hallo again,” John says. 

“I’m to take you home,” the young woman says, looking idly around her. 

“Home?” John echoes.

“Mmm … to collect your things,” the young woman says. “They’ll send an orderly up to sit with the processor while you’re out.”

“Right,” John says with a quick smile. “Good, yes.”

 

John limps down the long, dim hallway. He unlocks a door and crosses the threshold while looking down to drop his key back into his pocket. He pushes the door closed and palms the light on before he glances up again. There’s a man sitting on the edge of the narrow bed. He’s tall and thin and exquisitely tailored, with soft features, slightly receding auburn brown hair, and clear hard blue eyes. He has an overcoat – fluid wool with a velvet collar – spread over his legs like a lap blanket.

“Who the hell are you?” John demands, his gaze flicking towards his desk drawer. 

“Someone whose security clearance gives me access to this,” Mycroft says, sweeping the folds of his overcoat aside to reveal a battered, dun-colored metal box resting at his feet, “as well as to your room.”

“That’s – that was mine,” John says, his expression softening into uncertainty. “That was my kit case.”

“Then I expect you’d like it back,” Mycroft says, drawing a slim leather-bound notebook from inside his jacket, “in view of your – rather surprising – reassignment.”

John’s eyes darken warily as Mycroft opens the notebook. 

“ _We tell them we won’t let them feel any pain_ ,” Mycroft reads flatly, “ _but what we mean is, we won’t let them feel anything at all_.”

“How do you – where did you get that?” John says, his eyes suddenly stricken.

“ _It’s not about protecting them from reality_ ,” Mycroft reads, “ _it’s about protecting us from it_.”

“Who _are_ you?” John demands, his expression smoothing and hardening. 

“The army thinks you can’t be trusted to treat a processor,” Mycroft says, ignoring the quick flinch of John’s gaze. “They think you’ve developed a post traumatic aversion to the use of down-regulators.”

“If you have the authority to give my kit back to me, I’m guessing you also have the authority to take Sherlock away from me,” John says. “Are you going to?”

“Is he dying?” Mycroft asks, his expression suddenly softening. 

“They’re all dying,” John says, “or they wouldn’t be processors.”

“If we’re playing semantics,” Mycroft says sharply, “they’re all already _dead_ , as far as the law is concerned.”

“Well I’m not the law,” John says shortly, “and Sherlock seems very much alive to me.”

Mycroft looks down, folds his notebook closed carefully, and slips it back into his jacket. He stands up, drawing his overcoat over his arm. He glances down at the kit case by his feet, and then steps deliberately past it. 

“Goodnight, Doctor Watson,” he says, inclining his head downwards as he passes John. 

John turns, watches him go out the door and close it softly behind him. Only when the latch clicks does John lurch across the room and scoop his kit case into his arms, his fingertips pressed white by the fierceness of his grip.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. this is kind of rough in spots, but i've been erasing and retyping it (word-for-word) for almost a year. here, have it.

**110 0001**

It’s a gray morning, judging by the watery light seeping around the edges of the still closed curtains in the sitting room and the lowered window blind in the kitchen. John’s cane is resting against the edge of the kitchen table; he moves between the refrigerator and countertop in uneven but unhurried lurches. He’s eating one nutrient bar, and gathering two more together with two fluid pouches onto a circular black lacquer tray. He puts the last piece of his own nutrient bar into his mouth, crumples and discards the wrapper before taking up his cane in one hand and the tray in the other.

“I think twelve hours might be the legal limit for living only on these,” he says, making his way into the sitting room. “We’re going to have to switch to actual food.”

Sherlock is sitting at one end of the couch. He’s dressed in a dark gray dress shirt and black suit pants, both garments lying a little shapelessly on his thin frame. He’s slumped against the cushions, his head not quite fallen back and his eyes half closed. His hands and feet are loose assemblages of joints and veins and thin white skin. John sets the tray down on the coffee table, which has been cleared of the previous night’s debris, and rests his cane against the arm of the couch.

“So, what do you fancy?” he says, taking up a nutrient bar and tearing the wrapper open. “What do you like to eat, when you’re not eating a paste of predigested proteins and fats?”

He breaks a piece off the bar and puts it to Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock opens his mouth, taking the food promptly.

John glances over the piles of books and papers stacked on the dining table and ottoman and bookshelf surrounding him, as he waits for Sherlock to chew and swallow and then accept the next piece of nutrient bar.

“Oh, hang on,” John smiles, leaning to extract a brightly colored leaflet from one of the piles on the table, “an Indian takeout menu. You eat Indian.”

He pauses to give Sherlock another piece of the bar, and then rifles through the piles to find a fistful of other menus.

“Chinese, Thai, Japanese,” he grins, “Turkish, Lebanese, Persian – you’ll eat anything that _delivers_.”

He gives Sherlock another mouthful before turning his attention to several curling credit card receipts, each with a taxi cab receipt attached to it.

“Veal with polenta and chocolate ganache from The Connaught,” he reads, “salmon and pralines from _Pied à Terre_ , eggs – wait. You spent _a hundred quid_ to have Eggs Florentine taxi’ed to you from The Savoy?”

He shakes his head in disbelief, but he’s grinning as he tosses the receipts back on the table and gives Sherlock the last piece of the nutrient bar.

“Okay, no more nutrient bars,” he says, tugging at the fabric of Sherlock’s narrow shirt, though it’s loose on his even narrower body. “Let’s see if we can get you from skeletal back to just too bloody thin, okay?”

The phone in John’s hip pocket beeps. He slips it out and glances at it.

“It’s your new handler,” he frowns, glancing at Sherlock. “He’s on his way up.”

John picks his cane up and crosses to the doorway between the sitting room and landing. A solidly set man with brindled hair is coming quickly up the stairs.

“Morning. Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, Scotland Yard,” Greg says, offering his hand as he reaches the doorway.

“John Watson,” John says, grasping his hand briefly. “Sorry – you’re a detective? Sherlock’s a _law enforcement_ processor? At ninety-six percent, I assumed he’d be processing intelligence or anti-terrorism.”

“Yeah, honestly? I hear Sherlock sort of suits himself,” Greg says with a slight grimace. “He’s supposed to be aimed at anti-terrorism investigations, serial killings - strictly high impact stuff, but he’s not adverse to a good jewel theft or an art fraud. And sometimes, he just goes off on his own tangent. Interlibrary loans, chicken feed formulation – there’s no telling what he’ll latch onto.”

John turns to look at Sherlock, still slouched in one corner of the couch. Greg’s eyes slide past John, following the direction of John’s glance.

“Jesus, is that him?” Greg asks in obvious disbelief as he moves past John into the sitting room. “For ninety-six percent he’s not much to look at, is he?”

He crouches down to look up into Sherlock’s face. Sherlock’s eyes are still half closed, the irises unmoving and the lids unblinking.

“I expected him to look bit less - _dead_ ,” Greg says.

“He’s been badly neglected,” John says, his voice level but steel edged. “He’s been underfed, overcooled, and indulged in an out of control drug habit.”

Greg glances up at him as John comes to stand over him.

“Donovan’s – she’s not a bad cop,” Greg frowns.

“Just a bad handler, then,” John says, coldly composed but for the quick, unconscious flex of his left fist.

“She seemed keen, and there’s only a few of us in the Met with the training - ” Greg says, still staring intently at Sherlock, “ – and I was already running a processor of my own.”

“Oh, actually, I was hoping that Sherlock wouldn’t need to share a handler with another - ” John begins.

“He won’t,” Greg says, straightening up abruptly.

“I see. I’m sorry,” John says gently.

“Honestly, I think Donovan’s afraid of him,” Greg says, as if John hasn’t spoken. “She says he _talks_ when he processes.”

“Not all processors are fully post-verbal,” John says. “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s – like someone talking in their sleep.”

Greg makes a slight sound that might be agreement.

“So, do you want to put the tires on the road?” he frowns. “See what we’ve got?”

John nods, stepping forwards and swinging his kit case up from the floor to the coffee table. Greg takes a stack of three thin, steel-cased laptops from one of the bookshelves and starts setting them up on the coffee table too. John sits down on the couch next to Sherlock, flips open the lid of his kit case, and lays out two rows of glass vials and a pile of ready packed syringes. He slips the earpieces of his stethoscope around his neck, unfolds Sherlock’s arm from across his waist, and pushes up the open cuff of his shirt sleeve up to expose the curl of blood filled tubing taped against the crook of his elbow. Greg uncoils several skeins of electrical leads, connects the laptops to each other, and then attaches two more lengths of cable to one laptop before offering the loose ends to John. John takes them with a slight lift of his eyebrows in acknowledgement. He dips his fingers into the curls at the back of Sherlock’s neck, and combs his touch upwards until he encounters the twinned ports at the base of his skull.

John slips the jacked end of one lead into each of Sherlock’s ports as Greg turns the laptops on.

“Hey, give us a second,” he says irritably, as one screen comes to life displaying a fine white line twisting subtly on a black ground.

“I didn’t do anything,” John says. “I just jacked him in.”

Greg scowls at the screen, at Sherlock, and back at the screen.

“So why am I getting process right now?” he says.

“That’s – what is that?” John says, leaning closer to the screen. “Five percent?”

“ _Eight_ ,” Greg says. “He’s processing at eight percent right now.”

They both look dubiously at Sherlock, who’s slouched motionless and expressionless.

“That’s - ” John begins, but he trails off.

“Yeah,” Greg says. “It is, a bit.”

John shakes himself back into focus.

“Are you ready?” he asks, looking at Greg.

“Yeah,” Greg nods decisively. “If he’s running at eight percent with nothing in his system, I can’t wait to see what he does with up-regs.”

John unwraps a syringe, fills it from a glass vial, and discards the needle before screwing the syringe barrel directly into the line attached to Sherlock’s arm.

“Alright, Sherlock,” John murmurs as he presses the syringe plunger down smoothly. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

_Sherlock slams into existence, falling through the thrumming blackness so fast that his breath is ripped from his open mouth. A thought – less than a thought, a single twitch of intention – and the void congeals abruptly around him, catches him, and blossoms into a thousand faintly glowing threads that curl around and cocoon him tenderly._

_He is made of nothingness; the shape of his body is traced in an absence where even the void cannot exist._

_Around him, billions upon billions of tiny lights begin to twinkle in the dark, some tracing lines and curves and complex grids, others aggregating like sand grains or scattering like stars. He inhales greedily, and lights sweep between his parted lips, prickle on his tongue, and swirl down into his chest. He exhales softly, just a mote or two of light curling from his mouth, and inhales again. Light surges through the chambers of his heart, runs swiftly along his arteries, and suffuses his flesh. His bones shine briefly, and then disappear beneath the spreading iridescence of his skin. He twists lazily, a naked swimmer in air, the darkly glittering tendrils of his hair wafting around his face._

_Sherlock lifts one hand in front of his face, studying the lights caught along the crescents of his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles. He turns his hand over; the lines on his palm are fractures in the night, where the light of day spills through. His life line broadens, flares brightly, and gathers itself into a familiar undulation: the river and its city, held in the hollow of his hand._

_Sherlock sweeps his arms out, and throws his head back. His body scribes one steep line from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes as he plunges down, among the towers and grids and meandering lines towards the snaking brightness of the river. He smashes through the blinding brilliance of its surface, into twinkling darkness, and then_

_he’s sitting at the kitchen table, with the morning paper spread across his empty mug and his marmalade streaked plate. He turns the page – it seems vast, like the unfolding of a landscape under cloud shadow – and the words are vibrant, each letter springing open under his glance like a puzzle box, disgorging the answers to questions he hasn’t even formulated yet._

_He turns the page again, to discover a great expanse of black bordered obituaries. Each one pinches itself at the corners, folds itself into a crisp edged origami flower, and they all flap upwards from a fallow field into a gray sky as a flock of crows. Sherlock, bundled in his coat and scarf against the raw air, tilts his face upwards to follow their flight._

_He’s at the kitchen table again, but this time his dissection tray and instruments are in front of him. In his hands he holds a live crow. Its wings lurch heavily in his grip, and its claws pick against his wrists. He opens it, folding it apart along its breast to reveal the hinges and planes of fibrous paper that make up its interior. The tip of his scalpel traces the curling path of the fibers, each one spun of a different digital strand – texts, emails, phone calls, pictures uploaded, internet searches, credit card charges, cash withdrawals, medical records. He draws each fiber out from the paper, strokes it straight, until he has transformed the crow into a skein of combed threads. The bird has grown lax and cold under Sherlock’s hands. He pushes it away, and a fresh one materializes in his grip._

“Document access,” Greg murmurs, as he and John survey the blocks of text and numbers appearing and disappearing on the three screens in front of them. “He’s looking at coroners’ reports, and cross-referencing the deceaseds’ data trail.”

“He’s looking for a murder?” John asks.

“No, he’s – he’s pulling out suicides,” Greg says.

“He’s skipping most of them. He’s just keeping these,” John says, as one and then two and then three records are plucked from the flashed documents on two of the screens to remain displayed on the third one. “Geoffrey Patterson, James Phillimore, and Beth Davenport – wait a minute, I saw about her suicide in the paper. It was a bit out of the blue, wasn’t it? She’d just been appointed to something in the government, and everything seemed alright at home.”

“Yeah, and the other two were surprises to everyone who knew them as well,” Greg says.

The screen show section of maps, with multiple routes traced between two fixed points.

“He’s calculating distances between where they were last seen alive and where they were found dead,” Greg says.

Sherlock’s breathing catches, a distinct huff of sound. John glances at him; he’s beginning to flush across his cheekbones, and there’s the slightest trace of sheen on his temples.

 _Geoffrey Patterson … 2.6 miles_ appears on the nearest screen, followed by a photograph of a highly polished pair of men’s Oxford shoes, then _James Phillimore … 1.8 miles_ , followed by a pair of well-worn sneakers, and finally _Beth Davenport … 3.1 miles_ , and a pair of almost pristine pale blue sandals, consisting of several thin satin straps and a pair of rather extravagantly curved kitten heels, and several photographs of the unpaved ground surrounding several cargo containers on the edge of a building site.

Greg folds his arms, frowning pensively at the screens. Photographs of street scenes flicker in rapid succession on two screens, while a street map on the third fills with dozens – hundreds, _thousands_ of tiny lights, each labeled with a date and time and then a string of letters and numbers.

“License plates?” John asks, glancing at Greg.

“She never walked across that building site in those shoes,” Greg says with a quick nod. “She must have got there in a vehicle. He’s pulling images from stop light cameras, CCTV, everything there is along any of the possible routes from the time she disappeared until - ”

“That’s got to be tens of thousands of pieces of data,” John protests.

“How about _hundreds_ of thousands?” Greg says, as a second map superimposes over the first. “He’s collecting data for the night Phillimore died, too.”

“And Patterson,” John says, as a third map overlies the first two.

The screens are unreadably dense accumulations of numbers and letters now.

“A processor can’t handle this volume of information,” John says with a slight shake of his head. “It’s not possible.”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s told Sherlock that, though,” Greg says.

Sherlock is flushed, and his hair is starting to curl damply away from the sweat on his forehead and temples. He lifts his hands from his lap and sweeps them from side to side, then plucks the fingertips of one hand together, stares intently at them, and then flicks his hand open again.

“Jesus,” Greg says.

“Incomplete processing paralysis,” John says, shifting around on the couch and dipping his head so that he’s looking more directly up into Sherlock’s face.

“Not a motorcycle,” Sherlock announces abruptly, “that’s ludicrous.

_He’s standing in the darkness, in the midst of an immense swarm of tiny insects – glossy beetles and diaphanous midges and pale moths, all flying around him. Some swoop swiftly past him, some flutter by, some blunder softly against him. He lifts his hands, brushing them away from his face. Here and there, an insect shines abruptly golden in the swarm. Sherlock lifts his hand, pauses, and plucks a glowing moth between his fingers. He frowns at it intently, but its light fades and then it’s just a dead insect. He flicks it away and scowls at the swarm._

_“I can’t make sense of this,” he says loudly. “Stop it – stop.”_

_The air turns abruptly viscous, and the insects are hanging motionless and glittering around him._

_“Better,” Sherlock says. “Now maybe I can see what you - ”_

_“ – that’s _Poecilus cupreus_ ,” Sherlock’s father says, bending his head to peer at the iridescent golden green carapace laid out on a blank page of Sherlock’s copy book. “Is that what you’re looking for?”_

_Sherlock shakes his head, scowling as he sweeps the beetle pieces aside._

_“No,_ cupreus _is diurnal,” he says. “Phillimore and Davenport died at night.”_

_He turns his head, and he’s once again standing at the center of motionless swarm. Most of the insects have darkened, but here and there one shines softly, as he stares at them, some dim and some burn brighter._

_“There,” he says, reaching out to pick one vividly shining mosquito from the air._

A string of numbers and letters appears on a screen, duplicates itself, triplicates itself.

“That’s a PCO plate,” John says. “It’s a cab.”

“It’s the same cab,” Greg says. “Jesus. It’s the same bloody cab, every time. That can’t be coincidence.”

“The cab driver,” John says.

 _Jefferson Hope, 23C Midway Road_ unfurls across the screen.

“I’ll have him taken in for questioning,” Greg says, standing up as he plucks his phone from his hip pocket.

He moves aside, lifting his phone to his ear. John looks back at Sherlock, who’s flushed and sweating and breathing heavily through parted lips.

“That was - ” John begins, but he breaks off abruptly as his eyes fall back to the laptop’s screen.

For a second he thinks he’s looking at blood corpuscles flowing through capillaries – deeply glowing red lights streaming through meandering, branching channels – but then he realizes that each light is tagged with a GPS serial number. As he watches, more and more of the lights wink out, leaving fewer and fewer still lit.

“There’s a squad car on the way to his house,” Greg announces, snapping his phone shut and moving back to the couch.

There are only half a dozen lights still moving erratically on the screen.

“What’s – what’s he doing now?” Greg frowns.

“He’s looking for the cab,” John says softly.

“You mean Hope’s out there now?” Greg demands. “He could be - ”

“I know,” John says, leaning closer to the screen even as he darts a sideways glance at Sherlock. “Come on, Sherlock, come on.”

Three lights, two, one; a street map image bursts open behind the single red dot.

“Camberwell Road, just north of where it joins the Brixton Road,” John snaps.

“Jesus, is there a way to tell if he has a passenger?” Greg says, flicking his phone open again.

The screen zooms in on the street intersection, and a haze of fainter lights blooms around the single red dot of the cab’s GPS tracker.

“What’s that – the GPS in all the cars around him?” Greg scowls, leaning in to peer at the screen.

“GPS, phones, computers – anything with an uplink that he can access,” John says.

“Satellite doesn’t have enough spatial resolution,” Greg says with a slight shake of his head. “He’s not going to be able to tell with enough accuracy if there’s - ”

The map disappears, abruptly replaced by a four different views of a busy street intersection. The flow of traffic stutters, as a turn light goes dark and a green light turns red without warning.

“He’s in the traffic control system,” John grins.

“He’s looking to see which uplinks move at the same time and in the same direction as the cab’s GPS,” Greg says, pointing to the image of one lane of traffic moving freely while the ones on either side have come to a complete stop, stymied by red lights on both sides of the intersection.

Phone number 555 742141 appears across the screen, and then Account name Jennifer Anne Wilson even as Greg punches the number in.

“Sherlock, when he realizes we’re onto him he’s going to bolt,” John says.

“Mizz Wilson, this is Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of the London Metropolitan Police,” Greg says into his phone. “I need you to trust me right now – I need you to get out of your cab – just stay on the street where the CCTV cameras can see you.”

The screen divides into two halves: on the left, a street map marked by the single red dot of the cab’s GPS, and on the right, video footage of the street intersection. Greg thumbs viciously at the buttons of his phone.

A woman with yellow-blond hair, dressed all in vivid pink, emerges from a black cab pulling a vivid pink suitcase with her. She glances around anxiously, and then hurries through the stalled traffic to the sidewalk.

“Get me foot units, at the junction of Camberwell and Brixton Road, now,” Greg snaps into his phone. “Black cab license number em three eight seven queue eye ex – driver is wanted on suspicion of three counts of murder.”

On the street, the driver’s door of the cab bursts open and the driver spills out. Despite the flurry of horn blowing around him, he simply abandons his vehicle and darts onto the sidewalk and then down an alleyway.

On the displayed street map, several blue dots begin to converge on the static red dot of the cab’s GPS.

“They’re not going to get there in time to catch him,” John grimaces.

The screens of all three laptops are taken over by flashing images of streets and alleyways, trashcans and dumpsters, stop signs and security gates, dozens of pictures compressed into just a couple of seconds. Then both screens simultaneously flick to a street map with a red line tracing rapidly through a maze of alleyways, while several blue lines trace straighter shorter routes to intercept it.

“Send them straight down Godden Street, and round by Baxter’s Lane,” Greg is saying loudly into his phone. “There’s a security gate across that alleyway – he’s going to have to come out there or double back. Get someone at the other end in case he does.”

The street footage is oblique glances of running police officers, and a bustling man dressed in brown corduroy and beige wool. On the street map, the blue lines converge on the red.

“They’ve got him,” Greg announces after just a few seconds, and then, to someone on the other end of the line, “yeah, yeah, patch me through.”


End file.
